The following United States patents comprise the closest known prior art: U.S. Pat. Nos. 600,049; 2,638,676; 2,656,607; 4,161,068; 4,216,587
As shown in the cited patents, it is known in the prior art to provide various devices to facilitate alignment of the rotatable shafts of two rotary machines which are to be coupled together. It is well known that precise alignment of two rotating shafts must be achieved prior to coupling the shafts together. Failure to align precisely the rotating shafts will result in great stresses on the coupling which joins the shafts, as well as extreme wear of the bearings which support the two shafts.
Of the many devices known in the prior art for achieving this purpose, most of them employ some form of clamping device which joins both of the shafts to a common jig in adjustable fashion. Often dial indicators or the like are employed to indicate the misalignment of the shafts with respect to an axis defined by the common jig structure. These devices are recognized to be expensive to manufacture and complicated and time consuming to use.
There is a dearth of shaft alignment devices in the prior art which are inexpensive to manufacture, simple to use, and reliable and accurate in aligning the rotating shafts.